Thursday, February 24, 2005

# It has to have electronic and/or moving parts of some kind. Scissors count, but the knife does not.
# It has to be a self-contained apparatus that can be used on its own, not a subset of another device. The flashlight counts; the light bulb does not. The notebook counts, but the hard drive doesn't.
# It has to be smaller than the proverbial bread box. This is the most flexible of the categories, since gadgets have gotten inexorably smaller over time. But in general we included only items that were potentially mobile: The Dustbuster counts; the vacuum cleaner doesn't.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

That's the thesis of a new book, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot of) Success in America, by John D. Gartner, a psychotherapist and clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. America may be the dominant force in the global economy because we're a nation made of somewhat Crazy Eddies—gonzo businessmen and -women who may be genetically predisposed to take big-time risks.

Rolls: Oven to 400 F.(1) Disolve yeast in milk.(2) Mix in sugar, butter, salt, eggs, flour. Mix well.(3) Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface. Knead into a large ball. Cover; let rise 1 hour.(4) Roll dough into a 21' x 16' wide rectangle. Load 'er up with the filling (see below).(5) Roll from long-side to short-side. Pinch the ends.(6) Using very sharp knife (I prefer a serated one) cut into 1 inch wide rolls, making sixteen. If want fewer, bigger rolls, cut them wider.(6) Grease your preferred baking pan (I like mine to be all squished up next to the other)- I generally use an 11'x 13' pan. Then place rolls in pan and into oven.(8) Bake until the rolls are slightly browned and not doughy. This will vary according to your oven. Just don't overbake.(9) When done, take 'em out and cover them in the delicious icing.

Filling:(1)Soften butter, so that it is spreadable.(2) After dough has been rolled out to the gigantic rectangle, spread the softened butter all over.(3) Sprinkle brown sugar over entire buttered rectangle. Use more if you like more.(4) Now sprinkle the cinnamon over the now sugary, buttery, doughy, rectangle.

Icing:Cream it all together with an electric mixer. Spread on hot rolls.